“Gracious God, my dear sister,” Angelica said, weeping into her kerchief. “Here I am, coming all apart, while you bear this affliction with saintlike fortitude.”
Soldierly fortitude, I thought. Because there wasn’t time for tears. I would shed them later. Right now, I didn’t want to mourn my husband.
I was no saint. I was Alexander’s angel. And I wanted to avenge him.
I remembered “Captain Molly” and Two Kettles Together, two women forced to fight when their husbands could not. And I wanted to do the same.
At some point, I looked up from a glass of lemonade that my sister had pressed into my hand to find Reverend Mason hovering over my chair. “Hamilton was the greatest statesman in the western world, perhaps the greatest man of the age. He has left none like him—no second, no third.” And I was nodding, quietly simmering, when he added, “To shoot such a man in cold blood, the vice president’s heart must be filled with cinders raked from the fires of hell.”
“But is he to be prosecuted for it?” I asked.
Then I stood, abruptly, raising my voice to repeat the question.
“Is Burr to be prosecuted for it?”
The din of mournful conversation fell utterly silent. The whole of New York society turned to stare. And I met their gazes, each and every one. Then, in a clatter of coffee cups, the gentlemen at a table beside me traded glances and made to rise.
But I stopped them. “Please don’t stand for me unless you will stand by General Hamilton in bringing his assassin to justice.”
A coroner’s jury had been empaneled on the night of Alexander’s death, but they were likely to dismiss it, as they did all affairs of honor.
Unless I did something about it.
My sister’s eyes flew wide at my impulsive declaration, but the blood in my veins flowed with pure rage, and I wasn’t finished. “I’ve heard the country is covered in mourning. I can see for myself the city is awash in black armbands. And at the dock, there was talk of burning down Burr’s house.” A hint of an approving murmur rumbled through the room at the threat of arson and mayhem, but that wasn’t what I wanted. “My husband helped make this a country of laws. Will we permit the vice president of the United States to stand above them?”
“By God, the vice president ought not be above the law,” said the editor of my husband’s newspaper. “Witnesses must be summoned and examined.”
Someone added, “Can we learn if it’s true that Colonel Burr has been practicing with pistols for three months past?”
I winced, having not heard the rumor of Burr’s practicing to kill my husband.
Burr had shown no remorse, no regrets, no mercy, and no fear.
But I’d seen enough moments of popular emotion in my time to know there would never be a better opportunity to clasp my husband’s killer in irons than now.
And I meant to see justice done.
*
IN THE BLUR of days following my husband’s burial, I donned a widow’s armor of black taffeta and lace, startling the owners of every prominent household with a visit, descending upon them with my orphaned children in tow, their eyes still red from crying.
It made me ashamed to exploit my children’s grief, to expose Ana’s derangement to outsiders, but we needed everyone to see the hapless state in which Burr left my family.
For, now that the Goliath of Federalism was slain, even Republicans found the decency to denounce Burr.
And because I’d learned the importance, in politics, of reinforcing the beliefs of the voter, I confirmed suspicions. “It was murder,” I told anyone who would listen, stopping just short of suggesting that President Jefferson had ordered it. “Did you hear how Colonel Burr enjoyed such a hearty and cheerful breakfast that his dining companion couldn’t believe he’d just shot a man?”
This bit of callousness never failed to elicit a gasp. Nor did the revelation that just a month before the evil deed, Burr had shown up at our door at an obscenely early hour and begged my husband for financial assistance to cover his debts. Alexander provided it and more, raising ten thousand dollars in cash for the man who met him at Weehawken bearing murderous intent.
In days of old, Burr was the master electioneer, but now I could almost feel the tide turning when I carried my campaign against him to the lawyers, the judges, the bankers, and the captains of industry. No less the candlemaker who lived but a few doors down from us, the baker at the corner, the carpenter, and the newspapermen. Burr would never shame or silence me while a breath remained in my body.